


swing wide your crane (run me through)

by tosca1390



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 00:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sacrificed nearly everything for the sake of him and Pack; now, the future stretches out before them, and Hawke doesn’t know what to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	swing wide your crane (run me through)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts), [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> One night, Jordan says to me, "gee, I'd love to see fic where Hawke and Sienna deal with what happens after she kills Ming."
> 
> Well. Here we are, 17 thousand words later. 
> 
> For Jordan. And the other four of you who read for this tiny fandom.

*

The wolf knows exactly where to find her. 

He breathes in at the top of the ridge; acrid smoke fills his nose, blood and fire. Below, the clearing is blown out of its greenery, just dark spots where trees or men used to stand. The earth under her is still lush, verdant; she takes care not to ruin the nature given to her. There is nothing but her in his sightline as he pads down the slope, his paws dark with dirt and the remains of trees and skin. His lieutenants flank him, spread themselves out along the perimeter; he trusts them enough to disengage, to direct his focus only on her. 

She is small and slight against the grass, dark grey ash touching the line of her cheek, the fine bloodied edges of her hair. He sees the sheen of it against the sunlight creeping along her hair; the blood is nearly the same red as her hair. So still, so quiet; if he didn’t have the surety of her life within him, the mating bond sharp and warm, he would think she was dead. Even so, the wolf noses at her jaw, the line of her throat. Wake up, the man thinks, finally straining at the edges of the wolf that guided for so long. Wake up.

“Clear!” he hears Indigo yell from his right, across the clearing. 

It’s then he shifts, out of the pinpricks of pain and pleasure, the sparks of light, and coming into his human self on his knees next to her. He reaches for her immediately, uncaring of his nudity. She is limp and loose in his arms, her skin still touched too strongly with the fire that burns within her. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, lowering his mouth to her ear. He breathes in and it is Sienna, the spice and earthy autumn scent of her; he knows her through the death and the blood on her hands. He has killed many for her, for Pack; he begrudges none of it. “Sienna, c’mon.”

Her hands flex weakly at his chest. Still her eyes will not open. 

“Gonna just strut around like that?” Indigo asks from across the clearing. 

Hawke glances at her for just a moment. Her eyes, sharp and blue and too dark to read, are fixed on Sienna. 

“We need to get her home,” is all he says. 

“Is she safe to come back to the den?” Riley asks, cool and efficient where Hawke cannot be at this moment. 

The sun beats down on his bare shoulders, the light touching the markers of loss and death surrounding them. Hawke cradles her to his chest and stretches to his full height, meeting Riley’s gaze. “Yes,” he says, touching the mating bond gently. He can sense the rise and fall of her ability now, and she is tapped out, exhausted. Ming wrung everything out of her, and now he is dead and gone. 

The wolf wants to call for blood; the man just bows his head toward his mate’s and begins the long run back to the den. She had led Ming far away, deep into SnowDancer territory, to save the den from residual impact. Forced to wait at the edges and protect the perimeter, he had felt every agonizing moment of the battle through the bond. She sacrificed nearly everything for the sake of him and Pack; now, the future stretches out before them, and Hawke doesn’t know what to see. 

In his careful grasp, Sienna shifts and turns her face away. He watches her, feels every soft slow beat of her heart, and is suddenly more afraid than he ever was. 

*

Sienna sleeps for days, tucked into the bed they’ve shared for three years now. She is a slight flame against the cool sheets, all warm skin and ruby dark hair. The blood and ash and dirt are gone from her skin; Lara had sponged her clean, as well as tended to Sienna’s injuries during her night in the infirmary. 

Hawke sits at her side, and waits. He is not a patient man, but he will wait for his mate. When he leaves her side, it is to be replaced by any one of those who love her; Walker, Toby, Lara, Indigo, Riley. She is never alone; he promised she never would be again, and he makes good on his promises. 

“She’s recuperating,” Judd repeats over and over, as the hours stretch into days. 

“She’s taking longer than the first time,” Hawke mutters, dropping his head into his hands. Two days is still too long. He thinks of the battle with Henry Scott, the sharp twist of the mating bond roaring in his chest. He didn’t lose her then; he won’t now. 

For a man forged in Silence, the emotion behind Judd’s gaze is nearly too much for Hawke to bear. This is his niece, his family – Walker is all but a shell as he walks around the den. Sitting over her still form in the bed they picked out together, Hawke feels nothing but kinship with these men. 

“She used _everything_ ,” Judd rasps, voice low. “It will take her longer to return.”

_If at all_ are the unspoken words they ignore in the air. 

Two days later, it is Brenna who corners Hawke outside the door to his – their – quarters, coming to meet Judd, to sit with the woman they’ve all tried to help so much. Brenna, a wolf with hidden steel of her own, a woman he can never say no to. 

“You need to call Sascha,” Brenna says quietly, her eyes wide and too blue in the simulated light of the den hallways. Her face is all strong drawn angles, her energy diverted to supporting her mate. 

Hawke crosses his arms over his chest, fixing her with a heavy stare. “Brenna – “

“It’s like – it’s like when I wouldn’t wake up – “ she says sharply, the tops of her cheeks flushed. “It feels like that. Don’t you feel it?”

He does, a strange endless calm from Sienna’s end of the bond. Once before, when she tried to close herself off after the Scott battle, was when he felt this quiet, this silent. The wolf within rides close to the skin, howling for its mate, for wide cardinal eyes and a sharp slice of a smile. 

“I don’t know what Sascha would be able to do to help,” he says at last. 

What he doesn’t say: he doesn’t want to know it if Sienna doesn’t want to wake up. 

“C’mon,” Brenna says softly. “She got me, didn’t she? And she was new back then.”

Her hand curls around his forearm, the comfort of a Packmate’s touch. “Sascha is a friend, and she loves you both. She would want you to call.”

It is impossible to look anywhere but his feet. The bones of his jaw feel as if they will crack with tension. This was a success, he thinks. The last success necessary in the middle of the Psy world coming apart; the tension bled into every aspect of society, and now, now they were safe, Sienna is _safe_ \- 

And she still hides. 

Hawke looks up and rubs his knuckles over the soft curve of Brenna’s cheek. “Go get your mate. He needs to get some rest,” he says. Judd had barely left Sienna’s side, as had Walker; it had taken a half-tearful, half-furious, very pregnant Lara to finally drag Walker away to their quarters for some sleep. 

Brenna nods and passes into the doorway. Hawke lingers outside, his hands curled into hard fists. Helplessness is not a familiar emotion; he hates the feel of it, claws sinking into every inch of his chest and heart. The mating bond is there, it remains; he takes hope from that. 

But still, she sleeps. 

In the dark of night, the den subdued and silent, he shifts from his seat next to the bed and stretches out next to her. She is just a fluttering rise and fall of the sheets, hair splashed across the pillows like blood in the water. Hawke cups his hand over her cheek and settles on his side, his thumb curving along the line of her jaw. In the darkness he sees all, wolf-eyes sharp; she does not stir. 

“This is what we wanted. What you wanted,” he says into the night-cool air. 

She doesn’t shift, doesn’t shiver. There is nothing but unrelenting calm on her side of the bond. 

“It should feel better,” he murmurs, words he will only share with her. “You should be here. Wake up, baby. Come on.”

Sleep flits across his eyelids but briefly. He rests lightly, as if on watch, waiting for a change in her. He has slept next to her thousands of times, it seems, and this is the most fraught. 

In the morning, Lara comes and proclaims no change, worrying her bottom lip. The healer’s distress is tangible in the air. 

Hawke picks up his phone and makes the only call he can. 

*

“You should have called sooner,” Sascha says as soon as she gets out of Lucas’s car in the White Zone. She doesn’t wait for her mate to open the door and help her out, earning a growl from the man himself. 

“Hello to you too, Sascha darling.” Hawke smiles despite the strange unease gnawing at him from inside out. The day is lovely and cool, autumn in the Sierras; it is all blue crisp skies and white puffs of clouds, the trees arching their changing leaves towards the sky. 

Sascha wrinkles her nose, her dark hair braided over her shoulder and breast, over her loose heather-green sweater. Her palm rests protectively over the slight swell of her stomach; a second child on the way for the DarkRiver alpha couple. Hawke tempers his envy, the ache in his middle. It was never even a possibility, with Ming still alive; and now – 

Lucas wraps an arm around Sascha’s shoulders, his cat-green gaze settling heavily on Hawke. “She’s feisty today,” he says. 

Glaring at her mate, Sascha begins to walk forward. “You should have told me immediately,” she says to Hawke as the three of them fall in step. Lucas is the buffer between her and Hawke; the possessive instinct is hard to control, even without an unborn child in the picture. 

“She’s been fine before,” Hawke says evenly. The wolf claws at the edges of his skin, unable to bear the idea of being unable to take care of its mate themselves. 

Sascha glances at him across Lucas, her dark cardinal gaze softening. “Hawke – “

“It’s fine,” he says stiffly, still ill-at-ease at times with Sascha’s innate ability to see into the heart of him. He knows it is as reflexive to her as breathing, but still. He is a solitary man, even now. There is only one person who knows him as he knows himself, and she is as silent as death. 

The walk into the den is muted, uncomfortable. When Sascha slips into Hawke’s quarters to join Lara at Sienna’s bedside, Lucas takes a hold of Hawke’s shoulder before he can join the empath. 

“What can DarkRiver do to help?” Lucas asks, voice low. 

“We’re fine,” Hawke says reflexively. 

Baring his teeth in a flash of white against olive skin, Lucas tightens his grip. “Hawke.”

Pale blue eyes of a wolf meet the cat’s sharp green gaze. And Hawke feels it, the brotherhood of one alpha to another. He grits his teeth and raises his hand to Lucas’s shoulder, an echo of the panther’s grip. 

“Having Sascha here is enough. With the pregnancy, and everything.” He pauses with a blink. “Where’s Naya?”

“Tammy’s.” Lucas doesn’t move his hand. “Mercy’s adding another shift of our watch to your perimeter.”

“Riley know that?” 

“Riley’s been here, for you,” Lucas says quietly, his voice low. “As we all are.”

There’s an odd tightness in Hawke’s chest, born of fidelity and trust. “All right,” he says at last. 

They drop their hands at the same time. Lucas steps back, leaning against the corridor wall as Hawke moves to the door. He will not trespass on Hawke’s private quarters, not with Sienna so vulnerable; even with his pregnant mate inside, he will wait outside, on guard. The gesture, seemingly nothing, means mountains. 

Hawke nods once, and slips inside his quarters. 

*

Sascha stays for hours, murmuring softly every once in a while. Lara and Walker linger with Hawke, hugging the edges of the room. There are no indications of movement; Sienna is as still as she has been for five days, just as limp. The work is on the mental plane, an avenue Hawke cannot touch but for the briefest of glances. But when he looks at the bond, he can feel Sascha’s coaxing warmth there, influencing his stubborn mate. 

“She should stop,” Lara murmurs from Hawke’s left, her hand curved over the hard rise of her belly. Seven months in, and nearly ready to pop; she is flushed and happy, if drained from the last few weeks. At her other side, Walker takes her hand in his and brings it to his lips, a rare display of public affection. 

“She knows what she is doing,” Walker says, voice even and quiet. There is a rawness behind his pale green gaze that catches Hawke off-guard. 

“Lucas is about to go mental if he doesn’t see her soon,” Lara retorts, tipping her head back to look at her mate. 

“It’s fine,” Sascha says out loud at last, her voice thin and reedy. “I’m fine.”

She rises from her seat at Sienna’s side and Hawke is there immediately, a steady hand on her elbow. His gaze flickers to his mate, still so quiet and motionless, before he looks at Sascha, swaying on her feet. 

“You’ll make him mad,” Sascha says, looking up at Hawke with a wry, tired smile. There are dark circles under her eyes, new from hours ago; he swallows hard and tries to temper his concern, the dark secret parts of him she reads so easily. 

“Not as mad as if I let you faint,” he counters, the nervous energy cascading through him. “What’s – “

Sascha shuts her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. Hawke quiets himself, jaw tight. Lara’s anxiety and concern flutters at the back of his mind like a hummingbird’s wings. The tension in the room rises, the hairs on the back of his arms at attention. 

“She’s coming,” is all Sascha says at last. There is an ache hiding behind the simple words, one Hawke cannot trace. “Soon.”

“Sascha – “

“I – I can’t gather all of her right now,” she says, shaking her head. Her night-sky gaze flickers behind Hawke, to Walker and Lara. “She’s coming, though. She made the decision to come back.”

Nausea turns Hawke’s stomach. “Was there another option?” he asks roughly. 

Sascha meets his gaze, mouth turned downwards. “Don’t leave her for long,” she says to him, only him; her voice is low. 

Then she sighs, rubbing her palms over the slight rise of her belly. “Lucas is anxious,” she says softly. “I will come when she wakes. You _call_ me, Hawke.”

“I will,” he says, guiding her to the door. 

“I mean it. No stubborn alpha male idiocy. This is – “ Sascha bites her bottom lip, the honey-gold of her skin too pale. “This is different,” she finishes as he opens the door. 

“Jesus Christ, Sascha – “ Lucas all but growls as he pushes off the wall and comes immediately to his mate as she moves into the corridor. His eyes flicker from Hawke to Sascha and back. “We talked about this – “

“I’m _fine_ ,” she all but hisses at him, the frayed threads of exhaustion scraping her words raw. But she lets Lucas take her in his arms, keeping her weight. 

“Thank you,” Hawke says to them both, the words rough and low. 

Lucas nods, the understanding passing between them, alpha to alpha. Riley arrives to show them back to their vehicle, eyes hooded. Hawke palms his lieutenant’s shoulder for a moment before he turns and heads back into his quarters. 

“I don’t understand,” Lara says, voice thick with tears, as she leans against Walker. 

Walker is a shade of his usual self, pale taut skin and dark circles. A shock of blond hair falls over his brow as he curves a protective arm over Lara’s waist. “Sienna is healing herself internally, and will return when she is ready,” he says evenly, gaze fixed on Hawke. 

“But she – she had to make the decision?” Lara asks, words straining out of her throat. 

“You two go rest,” Hawke says, a suggestion tinged with the tone of an order. “You need it.”

He can’t have the conversation he needs to have with Walker and Lara hovering; fear grips at the heart of him, the wolf snarling with it. With reluctance, the couple leaves for their own quarters, Marlee still there waiting for them. Hawke turns down all the lights in the room and peels off his clothes, curling up in bed next to Sienna. He’s done so five nights in a row. He will continue to do so. 

“Come back,” is all he says to her tonight. He watches the rise and fall of her chest under the sheets, and wonders. What other choice would she have had?

*

Hawke wakes in the pre-dawn simulated light, blue and cool against the walls of their bedroom. The balance of weight on the bed has shifted; he is alone. 

Immediately he sits up, alert and sharp, hunting-quiet. The shower runs in the bathroom, light seeping from underneath the cracks of the closed door. He passes a hand over the empty side of the bed. Still warm. Sliding from bed, he drags on a pair of sweatpants and walks to the bathroom door, pushing it open just the slightest. The sight that greets him is a balm to his gaze and a worry to him at the same time. 

Sienna stands under the pulsing spray of the showerhead, her eyes closed. Her hair is nearly black with dampness, her skin covered in goosebumps. No steam rises from the shower; it must be cold as ice against her skin. Hawke ignores the curve of her waist, her thigh, her breast; he walks forward and pushes the glass door aside carefully. The spray against his bare chest is cold, like the lake from years ago; he has a sudden memory of her underwater, all fire and ice, her hair a floating cloud of ruby-dark flame. 

“Sienna,” he says after a moment, voice husky and gentle. 

Her eyes open to his at last, dark as the night sky. No flame touches her, and will ever again. Mouth opening wide, she begins to shake. 

“I burn – “ she sobs out, in a raw voice he has never heard from her before. It cuts him to the quick; the wolf is silent, watching her warily. 

“Baby – it’s okay,” he says, startled. His hand reaches through the icy water to shut off the shower, as he grabs for a towel with the other. 

“I can’t – I can’t –.” She chokes on the words, lithe arms wrapped around herself. Her hair sticks to the plane of her back, the curve of her shoulders. 

Shushing her softly, he wraps the towel around her and coaxes her out of the shower. His heart is lodged in his throat. She sounds nothing like the Sienna he has always known, and knows almost better than he knows himself now. He gathers her against his chest and strokes his hands over her damp skin as she buries her face in his chest. Her fingers dig into his sides and he relishes it, the feel of her animated touch. 

“It burns,” she whispers against his skin, still damp and warm to the touch. 

All he can do is soothe her. He drops the towel and lifts her into his arms, carrying her back to their bed. Her fingers curl into his muscle and skin. Surrounded by the sheets she picked, the pillows she perused in catalogs with delight, he tucks her close into the cradle of his chest, covering her with as much skin as possible. 

She has never felt so small against him. His hands slip over her spine, the damp fall of her hair. With her face pressed to his chest, she shakes with sobs, odd choking sounds escaping her throat. He feels them reverberate through the bond like a punch to his gut. Anchoring her, he shapes himself to her; it is nearly the most helpless he’s ever felt, except in the face of his father’s death. 

“You’re here. I’m here,” he says at last, once her tears have subsided into just thick breaths and snuffles against his chest. “You’re here.”

Abruptly she stills in his arms, fingernails shaping crescents into the tough skin of his arms. He cups his wide palms across her back, slides a hand up to the nape of her neck. “Sienna?”

“Here,” she says faintly. “I’m here.”

But the bond is placid and achingly quiet between them. Hawke just holds her close and shuts his eyes, listening to the quiver of her breath in the darkness. 

*

Hawke is just ending his call with Sascha when Sienna creeps out of their bedroom. Her clothes hang from her limbs, loose and swamping her wrists and hands. Her hair is a tangled mess of dark ruby down her back, her eyes dark and sunken in her drawn face. But she is up, and moving; the man takes heart in that even as the wolf is wary still. 

“You’re up,” he says, setting his phone down on the kitchen counter. 

“I am,” she says, voice reedy. 

They look at each other from across the open living room, hesitant and unsure. He has a sudden memory of finding her in here all those years ago, sitting cross-legged and defiant on the floor with a pack of cards shifting in her palms. How they have gone from then to now, to looking at each other as if they don’t know the other – it sits uneasily on his shoulders. 

Inhaling deeply, he makes the first move. He walks to her and cups her face in his hands, the pads of his thumbs rough against her taut skin. 

“You scared me,” he says, ripped open for her, only for her. “ _Sienna_ – “

Rising on her tiptoes, she presses her mouth to his, half-desperate, half-wanting. He hauls her close to his chest and kisses her, his mouth a hard wet slant over hers. She feels brittle and fragile under his hands but her fingers tunnel into the thick hair at the nape of his neck and she holds on with something of the strength he remembers from before. Just days ago, even in the midst of the coming onslaught, she had played and teased; now she is just a supplicant, asking for all he can give. 

Somehow they end up pressed against the wall of the living room, one of his legs pressed between hers, his hands lost in the endless lengths of her tangled hair. She is too still under him, her mouth cool and sharp. Her palms spread over his shoulders, a tremble in them he can feel against his t-shirt. 

“Sascha is coming,” he says, opening his eyes. 

There is no light in Sienna’s gaze, just the deepest black that he cannot read. She rests heavily against the cool wall, her hands falling from his shoulder to his chest. “Oh.”

“She made me promise to call,” he says a little ruefully, tucking the hair back from her face. 

“You are a man of your word,” she murmurs, voice dry. He doesn’t like the way she sounds. “I don’t need her.”

“That’s not what she said. And she’s the empath, so – “

“I’m not a child,” Sienna says flatly. She drops her hands from him altogether. 

He does not. His hand curves at the line of her taut throat. He can feel the flutter of her pulse under his fingertips. 

“No one said you were,” he says, voice even. “This is about you getting better.”

“I’m fine,” she says stiffly, drawing back entirely. She is flat against the wall, mutinous even with his hand at her throat. Her cold gaze doesn’t leave his. 

Then, he feels it; the foreign ache of disconnect. It is the first time he’s felt her shut down since the beginning of the bond. As if a pond has frozen over, he cannot touch her. It is a strange horrible silence that has his wolf scrabbling for control under his skin, the claws peeking out of his skin. 

“Sienna – “ he rasps out, his fingers closing over her throat. 

She twists away, out of the safe circle of his arms. The move is familiar, Indigo-taught; Sienna uses it as play, as part of the chase. But today, it is all defense. Across the room in a moment, she edges towards the bedroom. “I have to dress,” she says evenly. 

_Jesus Christ_ , he thinks as she disappears physically and mentally, goes to a place he cannot fathom or follow. _Jesus Christ, what happened_?

The wolf is all but growling, tearing at his throat. Hawke curls his hands into fists at his sides and waits, leaning against the wall. It is supposed to be over; it is supposed to be _better_. 

The Laurens come knocking soon enough; as soon as she has woken up, Hawke has expected them at any moment. The bonds of family between them were strong enough to defy the Net. As soon as Hawke opens the door, Toby and Marlee make a beeline for Sienna as she sits in the living room, still and quiet. Walker and Judd linger at the doorway with Hawke, their gazes too solemn for joy at her waking. 

“She’s not right,” Hawke says at last in low tones, the words dragging from his throat.

“It was a traumatic moment for her,” Walker says after a moment, green eyes nearly translucent as he meets Hawke’s gaze. “It will take her time to gather herself.”

“It’s not that,” Hawke mutters, running a hand through his hair. “She’s – she’s quiet. Here,” he says, thumping his chest. 

Judd’s gaze flicks from Hawke to Walker and back. “Sascha will help,” he says at last, worry creasing his brow. “Sascha will know what to do.”

Hawke sure as hell hopes so. He leaves the Laurens to their reunion; the office requires his attention, the den needs their alpha. For days he has been of one mind, and now – now he feels lost, anchorless. There is nothing but a placid chill from the bond, and he cannot breathe for the hell of it. 

In the evening, he returns to find her already in bed, the sheets pulled up to her shoulders. It is barely eight o’clock. He pauses in the doorway of their darkened bedroom, his mouth curved downwards. 

“Baby, do you want to eat something?” he asks, voice hollow in the still room. 

A pause, and then a shift of her head against the pillow. “I’m fine,” she says, all cool even tones. 

He wants to push, to force her to sit in the light and meet his gaze. But there is something horribly tender in the line of her lithe form under their sheets, the emptiness in her words – he can’t bear to push. He eats alone in the living room, and showers. When he returns to the bedroom, naked and damp, she has her back to his side of the bed. 

They do not sleep to sides. They tangle, they breathe each other in; they always have. He has danced with her for years, and he wants to continue to do so. 

Sliding into bed, he reaches for her with a gentle hand. 

“Please – please don’t.” 

Her words cut into him as blades, sharp and gaping. His hand stops mid-air.

“Sienna – “

“I can’t,” she says curtly, voice muffled by the pillow. 

“I wasn’t going to force myself on you,” he all but growls. 

“I know.” There is a hitch in her breathing; he feels it in his own chest. Sometimes he thinks he can feel her heartbeat in his veins. It’s the most comfort he’s taken in the past few days. “I can’t be touched right now.”

Swallowing past the lump of need in his throat, Hawke drops his hand to the sheets. “Right now?” he repeats, voice thick. 

She says nothing, just lapses into silence. Stretching out, he stares up at the ceiling and feels more alone than he has since Rissa’s death. 

_What happened?_

*

Silence becomes the status quo. 

Days pass, and the den falls back into its normal rhythms and patterns. If Hawke is quieter, less easy to tease and rib, no one says a word. Sienna is silent, withdrawn; at night she sleeps with her back to him, just quiet breaths and silence along the mating bond that has sustained them both at one point or another. 

In the midnight hours he calls Riley; their wolves speak with teeth and growls, friendly fire in the midst of a war they thought was over. 

“She’s shutting me down,” Hawke says two weeks after she wakes, sitting against a rough tree trunk. Riley sits opposite him, taping his bleeding knuckles. Hawke was too rough, too sharp with the lieutenant; he has no other outlet. 

In the rich silver moonlight, Riley’s gaze is just as sharp. He blinks at his alpha, mouth tightly drawn. “She’s doing it with everyone. Toby’s just about beside himself,” he says. The eldest Lauren boy is under Riley’s protection, a mentee as he finishes his soldier training. They are as close as a true uncle and nephew, the ties of family stronger than blood. 

“I mean – Christ, Riley. She’s smothering the bond,” Hawke mutters, wiping the sweat from his brow. The bark of the tree digs harshly into the tight muscles of his back. “I can’t figure it out.”

“What does Sascha say?” Riley asks, his voice warming at the empath’s name. Years after what Sascha did for Brenna, and still Riley would take a bullet for her. The packs are intertwined so deeply, something Hawke wouldn’t have imagined ten years ago, even. 

Ten years ago, Sienna was thirteen and under Ming’s tender care. Now she is a woman grown, and lost to Hawke. He wonders what will be simpler to deprogram in the long run; Ming’s hold on her, or hers on Hawke. 

“Sascha can barely talk to her. The pregnancy is making her extra-sensitive,” Hawke says at last, his teeth clenching together. Every time Sascha leaves after a session with Sienna, she has to be all but carried back to her car; Lucas is all snarls, and Hawke feels nothing but empathy. He too has a mate he cannot touch; at least Sascha knows, is aware, can soften her fingers along Lucas’s jaw to soothe him. 

Sienna won’t touch him. Not even the barest of glances. The wolf is anxious and angry, starved for physical contact – for the feel of his mate’s skin against his own. 

“She says – she says it’s a failsafe. A falling back into the patterns of Silence,” Hawke adds at last, his voice raw and low in the cool autumn air. The leaves crunch under him as he shifts against the tree, tipping his head back. “She doesn’t know why.”

Riley grunts, scrubbing at his bruised knees. “Sienna disabled the Silence protocols.”

“Who the fuck knows what kind of embedded conditioning she has,” Hawke says darkly. 

He knows; the wolf knows. There have been moments in the darkness of their shared room over the last four years, as plans and dreams and worries took shape in their words, that she has shared those memories, pried them out of her suppressed past and brought them into the here and now. Ming needed a monster for a pet; he almost succeeded in making her one. 

“What is she hiding?” Riley asks after a long tense silence. 

“Are you asking as my friend or as my lieutenant?” Hawke counters, lip curling. 

“Both,” Riley shoots back, his eyes flashing in the moonlight. 

Rubbing a hand over the nape of his neck, Hawke lets out a sigh so deep, it rips right from his stomach. “I don’t know,” he says at last, and it kills him to admit it. 

“Shit,” is all Riley can say to that. Hawke couldn’t agree more. 

*

Three weeks since the kiss in the living room, and Hawke feels as if he is about to crawl out of his skin. 

“Don’t – “ he says brusquely as Indigo reaches out to touch his hand from across his desk. “I just – “

Her deep blue eyes widen, mouth narrowing. “Shit. It’s that bad?”

“You’ve seen her,” is all he says in return, gaze flickering from her back to his datapad. 

Sienna moves about the den almost as a ghost. She spends her time with the pups in the nursery, with her Lauren family, with Marlee. She eats little, sleeps less; when he wakes to check on her, he finds her out of their bed more often than not, sitting alone in the living room or the bathroom. When she trains with Indigo, she is all but echoing rote motions; it is as if the fight has gone out of her completely. Sascha comes twice a week, and still there seems very little movement. Hawke can feel nothing from the mating bond; it weighs on him, but he will not push. There is something unbearably fragile about Sienna, in a way he’s never seen before. 

Tapping her fingers against the edge of his desk, Indigo grabs his gaze once more. “Hawke, she’s depressed.”

He blinks, the icy chill of realization slipping down his spine. His wolf scrabbles against the surface, aching to come out. “She’s Psy.”

The words slip out before he even registers the idiocy of them. Indigo just shoots him a narrow look of exasperation, dark tendrils slipping out of her high ponytail to curl around her face and throat. “Are you kidding me?” she asks. 

“I – “ he pauses, scowling. “Sascha hasn’t said a thing.”

“They’re not programmed to understand this kind of emotional darkness. This is Brenna to an extremity we can’t imagine,” she says evenly. “It’s – it’s a Silence familiar and completely different. The void of it? Sascha can’t touch that. Not like this.”

Hawke rubs a hand over his face, the bond in him aching fiercely. 

“You need to talk to her,” Indigo says after a still, tense moment. 

“I don’t – I can’t shield her from this,” he grits out. There is a weight in his chest, heavy on the wolf and man. He blames her for nothing, and yet – he can’t parse out the anger he feels at a dead man from the frustration he has for his mate, his independent, shaken, troubled mate. There is no road map for him, and the wolf is at a loss. 

“At the very least you need to touch her. You look like your wolf is about to leap out at me,” she says pointedly. “Sexy, but not okay.”

“Indigo.” His voice is a growl, low and threatening. 

She raises her hands and gets up from the chair across his desk. “She’s my family too, Hawke. She’s Pack. And you both need to come back to us,” she says quietly before she slips out of his office. 

Sitting back, Hawke stares into empty space, his mouth a hard line. The mood of the den is quiet, as if waiting for a long fall from a high cliff. The pups are somber, wary; the adults are too cautious. The fabric of Pack is in his bones, in his blood; if he is half of himself, as he feels, what must they all sense of him? 

He thinks to call Sascha, to press her for more; but she was here just yesterday, and the strain of Sienna’s emotional absence was much too clear on her delicate features. Instead, he pushes back from his desk, and hunts down the next best thing. 

Walker is alone in the Lauren quarters, willing to let Hawke in without a word. 

“Lara is busy prepping Lucy for her absence when the baby comes. I can call her, if you would like,” Walker says as Hawke sits at the kitchen table. He has a distinct memory here, of Sienna all rebellious eyes and flashing teeth as she helped her young brother and cousin with their homework. 

“No. That’s okay,” Hawke says, rapping his knuckles against the smooth wood of the table. “I – it’s about Sienna.”

In the middle of chopping green peppers, Walker halts. The knife, stainless steel and sleek in the simulated light, settles on the cutting board. Even with his back to Hawke, the tension is clear in the line of Walker’s shoulders, the grip on the handle of the knife. 

“Sienna,” Walker repeats. 

“I think – I think she’s depressed,” Hawke says, as bluntly as he can stomach. To talk about her without her in the room feels like a betrayal; but there is so little she will let him do. 

“Depression is unfamiliar to those of our conditioning,” Walker says after a moment, turning to face Walker. His gaze is fiercely bright, the line of his jaw hard. 

“I know. Which is why Sascha is having problems. She doesn’t know what she’s looking at.”

“And you do?” Walker asks, not unkindly. 

Hawke’s mouth turns downwards. “You know I do.”

A loyal man bleeding his last in the snow, a mother lost without her mate; the wolf in control, the man biding his time and licking his wounds. Yes, he knows. He knows what he has buried, what he has suppressed; he also knows that his mind was built for it. Sienna is another story entirely. 

Walker blinks and sits across from Hawke. “I apologize. These levels of emotion are still sometimes difficult to navigate.”

Hawke waves him off, setting his jaw. “She’s cut me off, Walker. I can’t feel anything,” he says, voice scraped raw. 

Something in Walker’s gaze clicks; Hawke can almost see the wheels turning in the other man’s mind. “I – once, when we were first mated, Lara told me she had sensed when I had shut down,” he says carefully after a moment. His voice is even but Hawke can sense the anguish for his niece in his words like his own. “For myself, it was a coping mechanism in a stressful situation, so I could function more efficiently.”

“Fuck,” Hawke mutters, the realization sinking through him. “ _Fuck_.”

“This may be a conditioning failsafe programmed into her, to deal with a severe emotional onslaught. I certainly never have given her such a tool, but to hide her flawed Silence – Sienna is smart enough to figure out her own mind,” Walker says, a bone-deep weariness in his tone. 

“What – what the fuck do I do?” Hawke asks, fisting his hands on his knees. To be here, he is at a loss. 

Walker steeples his fingers together on the kitchen table, the remnants of green pepper on his nails. Face drawn and pale, he looks at Hawke with nothing but empathy. There are moments when Hawke is amazed that the Laurens lasted in the confines of Silence as long as they did. 

_Not all of them did_. 

Fear grips Hawke as it never has before. “Jesus – Kristine – “

“I had thought of this,” Walker says, voice too quiet. “Kristine – it wasn’t like this. She was erratic, wild towards the end.”

“This isn’t the end, Walker,” Hawke says, voice deadened. “This is just the start.”

Walker has nothing to say to that. He needs no words; Hawke can read underneath the pale gaze. Inside, the wolf raises its hackles; the war may be over, but the battle is yet to be won. 

*

Hawke is no stranger to the emotional disturbances of the Pack. From deaths to miscarriages to injuries to petty feuds, he has negotiated and supported his Pack through the worst of times. 

Here, though – here is a different matter altogether. Sienna is Pack, but she is his mate. He had promised years ago, at the very genesis of their bond, to treat her as an equal, and she promised to do the same; now, when she is reneging, can he as well? 

“You have to tread carefully,” Brenna says as she sits with Hawke in his office the next day. Judd is to her left, his hand curved protectively over hers on the arm of the chair. The simulated light is gold with the turning of the autumn afternoon into evening, reflecting against her bright gaze. Hawke chooses Brenna because she is the only one who could touch this kind of darkness, this void. 

“In what way?” Hawke asks, reining in his desperation for some kind of control. The muscles of his throat are tight with it. 

Brenna’s mouth twists. She turns her hand up to be palm to palm with Judd. “If you push her too hard, she’ll lash out. Like I did with Greg.”

“That was different,” Judd interjects, voice icy cool. 

She shoots an affectionate glare at him. “It was, and it wasn’t. Touch in the wrong circumstance was the problem. But I did need the grounding of skin.”

The wolf drags its claws under Hawke’s skin, aching for the touch of his mate. Clearing his throat, Hawke runs a hand through his hair. “Touch is what set off her conditioning in the first place. Right?” he asks, looking to Judd. 

“The protocols are disabled. It’s merely a safety net for her now. The most essential thing is that she doesn’t bottle herself up,” Judd says evenly. “Kristine held it all inside until it reached critical mass, and that is when she imploded.”

Every hair on the backs of Hawke’s arms raises, fear touching all of his senses. “I – I don’t know how to get her to talk.”

Both Brenna and Judd blink at him. “What did you do before?” Brenna asks softly, gaze gentle. 

“We fought,” Hawke says, voice clipped. The strange dance of his and Sienna’s mating is for their memories alone. 

A flicker of a memory stirs, a moment alone in the moonlight, deep in the forests of SnowDancer territory. In that damn corset top, her skin peeking out of all necklines and hems, he had danced with her, a hand heavy on her loose hair. 

“You need to make her feel safe,” Brenna says after a long moment of silence. Her voice is hollow, haunted with memories. Judd’s fingers tighten around hers. “That’s the only way she’ll loosen the vise she has on her emotions.”

There is an inkling of a plan in the back of Hawke’s mind, a way in. Brenna and Judd leave him to his thoughts, her cheek pressed to her mate’s shoulder as Judd wraps an arm around her. Hawke sits back and rubs at his temple with his fingertips. The hole of Sienna’s emotional absence stretches and gapes within him, too sharp and too heavy. It grows as the weeks pass. 

He thinks of her, empty and glassy-gazed, in their bed, their den, surrounded by pups. The tension surrounding their bond is taut as a rubber band, poised to snap; but she is silent. There is a fire within her; he just has to let it out to burn off, burn away. 

Searching her out is easy. She sticks to their quarters when she isn’t with Indigo or her family. When he enters, she is curled up on the couch in the living room, clothes baggy at her wrists and waist. Her dark eyes don’t shift as he walks in; she stares into space, into nothingness. 

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the open doorframe. The corridors are quiet; no one will bother them. 

At last she glances at him, forcing the smallest of smiles. As if it is enough. “Hi.”

This is a stranger. He wonders if this is the mother she saw in those last years, those final visits. Ming may have had his claws in her, but Kristine never relinquished her rights of biological visitation. That much Sienna has shared. 

“We need to go somewhere,” he says after a moment, walking further into the room. 

She blinks slowly, her hair a tangled braid over her shoulder and breast. “What?”

“I want to take you somewhere,” he says, softening the command. He will not push, he will not push. 

Shoving the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her wrists, she presses her mouth into a thin line. “I don’t want to go to see Sascha,” she says flatly. 

Startled, he takes a seat on the edge of the coffee table. His knees graze hers; she stills at the contact. The wolf within all but scratches through his skin, wanting more. His patience is wearing thin. 

“I’m not – fuck, Sienna, I’m not taking you to see anyone,” he says, voice low. 

She looks at him, face drawn and gaze fierce, as dark as the night skies turning outside the den walls. “I don’t – “

“Please,” he says, a last resort. His voice cracks slightly on the plea. “Please, baby.”

For a long moment, she just stares at him, as if trying to remember something lost. It’s unnerving. He bites his tongue and waits, until she rises from the couch. Her jeans are too loose on her hips, and she looks so much younger than she ever has to him in this moment. 

“Do I need to change?” she asks calmly. 

Shaking his head, he rises and takes her hand in his. The skin to skin contact is a rush; he feels her jolt of surprise as if it is his own. “C’mon.”

She is silent as they walk through the den corridors towards the garage. Pack members pass and greet them, though quietly; hesitancy reigns in the SnowDancer den now. He can’t stand it, the absolute insecurity and sullenness of his lively and sharp Pack. He is responsible, unable to shake the sensation of loss and absence from Sienna, though she walks at his side as she has for years. 

“We’re driving?” she asks, breaking the off-putting silence between them as they enter the garage. 

“Not far,” he says, moving to his car and opening the passenger door for her. 

Hesitating only a moment, she slides into the seat with no help from him, settling herself. There is a thin twinge of anxiety between them, reverberating in his chest. When he turns on the car and drives out of the garage, it increases. It is the first he has felt from her in weeks. 

“Music?” he asks, hand hovering over the console as they break into the cool night air. Darkness has settled purple-deep and velvet over the treetops. The branches above them are just beginning to lose their leaves, pockets of open space into the skies. 

A pause, and then she reaches out to push his hand aside. “I’ll pick,” she says, glancing at him. 

He tries and fails to hide the smile that curves his mouth. Settling back, he drives deeper into the tall arching woods, towards a spot he thinks he knows by heart now. She hums as she selects the music – country, of course. The tension between his shoulder blades releases just the smallest amount. For a moment, he can pretend this is any other evening that they escape from the den for a brief spell of privacy. 

When he sets the car down and shuts the engine off, he watches her as she peers out the windshield. “Where are we?” she asks, gaze flickering to him. 

Smiling slightly, he gets out of the car. She follows suit before he can come around and help her, but he doesn’t mind. He likes the independence of her; he wants the spark back, the Sienna he loves as he loves nothing else. “You don’t remember?”

Leaves crunch under their feet as they move into the clearing. The scent of crisp air, spice, autumn fills his nose; it smells of her. He doesn’t wonder any longer why autumn is his favorite season, not anymore. Every moment in the outdoors is a constant reminder of her. 

Sienna walks in front of him, arms wrapped around her middle. She peers back at him, a slight of shadow and gleaming skin in the darkness. “Hawke – “

“This was our first dance,” he says quietly. If he reaches out, he could grasp her wrist in his, bring her into the circle of his arms – 

_Don’t push_. 

Wetting her lips, she shifts her weight on her heels. Her gaze doesn’t leave his. “It didn’t seem as if it meant very much to you at the time,” she says after a moment. 

Swallowing the hard edge of hurt, he steps forward. “It did. You mean everything to me.”

A shudder runs along the mating bond, reverberating deep in his chest. He latches onto it, feels the wolf pounce upon it. Her face is even, placid; but he feels the shake to her shell. 

“Come here,” he says quietly, the silence heavy between them. 

“I – “

“Sienna.”

Slowly, as if underwater, she moves towards him. Once she is close enough to brush his chest, he puts a large hand to the small of her back to bring her the rest of the way. He takes her hand in his own and tucks it to his chest. It takes a moment, but her other arm winds itself around his shoulders, her fingers light and cool on the nape of his neck. 

There is no music but the soft night sounds, the owls and last remnants of summer cicadas. A breeze rustles through the dying leaves as he begins to sway with her. Her cheek settles against his chest and something inside him unfurls just the slightest. 

“I’m here,” he says after a few quiet minutes, his lips near the soft edge of her hair at her brow. 

Her hand clenches around his. Dampness spreads under her cheek, soaking into the thick cotton of his t-shirt. He moves the hand on her back up and down, over her sweatshirt and following the line of her spine. 

“You know I’m always here for you,” he adds quietly, holding her too close. It is the most contact they’ve had in weeks and his wolf in reveling in it, aching for it. He wants skin; but that is a push too far. 

“Hawke, stop,” she whispers, voice broken and muffled against his chest. “I can’t – “

“You can do _anything_ , Sienna,” he cuts in sharply, his hand moving to stroke the tight braid hanging down her back. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

He feels it, her tug on the bond. Something in her is reaching out to him, despite the chill, despite the stasis. For the first time in weeks, he feels hope – hope in her, hope in them. 

“I – “ She pauses, her grip on his hand like a vise. He grips back; he will be her anchor, as she is his. 

“Talk to me, baby,” he says, speaking when she will not. 

Abruptly she tips her head back, eyes wide and velvet-dark in the dim evening light. Her mouth, inches from his, parts on a breath. 

“I think we should go home,” she says at last, a strange tremble to her voice. 

Deflated, he strokes a hand over her hair. “If you want.” 

“I – I don’t want,” she says, voice stilted. “But I just – oh, Hawke, I can’t.”

Her eyes are wet, one of the few times he’s seen tears in her eyes. Sienna doesn’t cry; she rises above, always moves forward. Now, they are both stuck in quicksand, and he is struggling to pull them both out before it overtakes and swallows them whole. 

“I’ve got you,” is all he says. He takes a chance and leans down, brushing a light kiss across her mouth. Her fingers twist around his; she doesn’t flinch and she doesn’t run. 

The ride home is quiet but for the music, twangs and lilting voices filling the deep cavernous gap between them. But when they go back to their quarters, and he curls up on the side of the bed he can’t stand to think of as his, she turns and shifts into the broad cradle of his bare chest. Her arm slides around his waist and she presses her forehead to his shoulder, breathing softly. 

Hawke wraps himself around her slight lithe form and holds on for dear life. 

*

“Something is different,” Sascha says a week later. She stands with Hawke at the edge of the White Zone, watching as Sienna and Toby walk together. 

“We had a moment,” he confesses through gritted teeth, peering up into the cool autumn sunlight. 

Sascha touches his forearm lightly, her free hand at rest on her stomach. Pregnancy is a lovely look for Sascha, already a lovely woman; she glows with it, when she isn’t drained by tending to the emotional roadblocks of Sienna Lauren Snow. “A good moment?”

“I think so,” he says, gaze fixed on Sienna and Toby. “She’s just – she’s bottled up so fucking tight, I have no idea what’s going to come out.”

“It has to come out,” she replies, voice sunk with concern. Her mouth turns at the corners. “I have very little experience with an emotional failsafe of this deftness. I can only sense that it’s there, looming.”

“It’ll come,” he mutters. The wolf is determined to bring its mate back. 

Sascha pats his arm. He meets her eyes, the starry cardinal gaze he knows and trusts so well. “Be gentle. She’s absolutely lost right now.”

The question rips out of him before he can stop himself. “But why?”

Humming thoughtfully, Sascha glances at the Lauren siblings as they walk towards a group of young pups. In the sunlight, Sienna is all flame and rubies, her hair falling in a long straight sheet down her back. 

“For years, she was a pet for Ming,” she says at last, voice soft and aching. “For years, he made her do atrocious things, in his name. And for years, all she thought of was revenge. When that is your life for so long, what happens next?”

Hawke flinches with her words, gaze fixed on Sienna. The bond is quiet once more, if not deadly still. It unsettles him, the ease with which she’s cut herself off. “She has me. She has Pack.”

“She understands that on one level. But she may not even realize what she’s doing to you, Hawke,” Sascha says quietly. “The conditioning is that deep. She’s waking up, eating, seeing her family, seeing you – she is going through the bare bones motions, and to her? It might be enough.”

“So you think she doesn’t – Sascha, she’s blocking the _bond_ ,” he grits out, the words like gravel on his tongue. 

Sascha sighs, exhaustion and sadness rippling through the air. “I think on some level, she thinks she’s just fine. She doesn’t understand how exactly she’s been affected by this.

“I don’t want to break her,” he says, throat tight. 

Blinking, she tips her head up to look at him. “You would know before anyone else if you were even close.”

Sienna looks across the browning grass just then, meeting his gaze. He smiles slightly, just for her. Her face doesn’t shift or change, but he feels the warmth of her gaze as if it is her touch on his skin. 

“I can’t help her anymore until she’s _feeling_ it again, Hawke. And that’s up to the two of you,” Sascha says softly. 

The wolf snarls, wants to be unleashed. Hawke tempers the urge to go to her, to kiss her until she can’t breathe, until she comes back to herself. Instead, he watches her kneel in the tall grasses with the pups who love her, who call her ‘Sinna’ and roll in her lap. He has been patient before. He can be so again.

*

“Another field trip?” Sienna asks as Hawke leads her away from the nursery and towards the den entrance. There is just the hint of dryness to her tone, the spark he remembers so vividly. 

Hawke curls his hand around hers and glances at her. She is still all cool control and calm, a strange placidness he cannot reach. Physically she is here; perhaps she does think that’s enough. 

It isn’t enough for him. 

“You’ll see,” he says after a moment. 

Her thumb slides over his knuckles. “I don’t like surprises,” she says warningly.

“When have I ever done something to hurt you?” he asks, eyebrows raised. 

Quieting, she pushes her braid over her shoulder and remains silent for the rest of the walk, even as they get into his car. The wolf snarls, thinks he may have pushed his luck too far already. But Hawke swallows down the growl rising in his throat and begins to drive. The wolf will have its chance soon enough.

Tonight, she doesn’t wait to ask before she selects the music for their drive. For a moment, with her knee tucked up to her chest and her head leaned back against the seat, her fingers tapping to the beat of the drums underneath the twang of guitars, it feels like any other moment. It feels normal. 

The terrain shifts into recognizable patterns; he feels the tension rise in the air as he sets the car down just outside the clearing. The trees are still lush here, all orange-red with curling leaves and high grass. The cabin sits alone, isolated; they have been there very little in the past few months, what with the concerns of Ming. Tonight, though, they reclaim their routines, their lives. Tonight he won’t stand for silence. 

“Oh,” she says, a small amount of wonder in her voice. She makes no move to get out of the car. 

“Oh?” he repeats, shifting in his seat to face her. “I thought we were due for a visit.”

“It’s been quite a while,” she says quietly, tucking loose strands of ruby-dark hair behind her ears. Her sweater, loose on her still, is one of his favorites; a dark blue, a paler shade of night. 

“I know,” he says, voice low. 

He doesn’t move, nearly doesn’t breath; he knows tonight she must make the first move. In the purple-gold sunset, her hair is a million rubies, her eyes like dark velvet. The urge to untangle her braid and bury his hand in her hair, pull her in so close she’ll never lose herself again, is a fire in his veins. But he must be the anchor; to push her too much will shatter her. He never thought he’d have to say that about Sienna –but the game has changed. 

At last, Sienna undoes her seat belt and opens the door to slip out of the car, her gaze focused on the well-weathered cabin. Exhaling slowly, Hawke follows suit. 

The cabin has seen its share of disasters; he can pinpoint the scorch mark on the floor of the kitchenette from one of their early experiments in baking. He had never played very much, before Sienna all but tumbled into his life like a hurricane. Now, all he wants is the playful woman to return, the one still discovering all life has to offer after years of repression and isolation. 

She sits on the edge of the bed as he shuts the door behind them, securing the bolt. “It’s pretty clean,” she says after a moment, her fingers playing with the end of her braid as it sits over her shoulder. 

“I came out here earlier, made sure it was livable.”

A strange burst of a smile touches her mouth, her eyes lit up for the first time in weeks. “You cleaned?”

He scowls even as the wolf leaps with joy, anticipation. “There was a little dust. That’s all,” he says, moving to the hearth. 

Something like a laugh escapes her throat as he kneels to build and stoke a fire. The autumn chill is heavy in the dim rooms, settling into his bones. “I think your lieutenants would enjoy the mental image of you dusting.”

He glares at her from over his shoulder. “Just try it.”

She scoots back on the bed with a small smile, tucking her jean-clad legs underneath her. “What’s the occasion?” she asks after a long spell of quiet, just the sounds of him rustling and fiddling with the wood and kindling between them. 

“Does there need to be one?” he asks, rising to his full height and turning to face her. 

The firelight casts odd shadows across her face, her gaze illuminated. She wets her lips, watching him as he approaches the bed. 

“No,” she says, her eyes fixed on him. “I just – I wonder.”

“I want to spend time with you, Sienna. That shouldn’t be news to you by now,” he says, halting at the edge of the bed. 

Her fingers pluck at the sleeves of her sweater. “It isn’t.”

“Maybe you don’t want to spend time with me,” he says after a moment, hands resting lightly on his denim-covered thighs.

Every point of her body abruptly thrums with tension. Her eyes are like black shards, shining in the firelight. “I came back for you,” she blurts out, a flush coloring her drawn face. 

That startles him, unnerves him. “What?”

There’s such an ache on her end of the bond, it permeates his entire body. He latches onto it, holds her to it; he wants all of it, the ache and the distress and the open conduit to her. 

“I – “

Perhaps it is too much, too soon. But he takes the opening, the first he’s had from her in a month. He goes onto his knees on the bed, kneeling in front of her. His hands come up to cup her face, his thumbs rough against the soft rise of her cheek. The skin to skin contact is a rush; heat and want pools in his middle. 

“Talk to me,” he says huskily, for the second time in as many nights. 

Tonight, she swallows and lifts her hands to his chest, twisting her fingers in the worn cotton of his t-shirt. “I came back for you,” she repeats, voice low and unearthly. She feels as if she is a ghost, vapors to disappear into the air. “I couldn’t leave you alone.”

The meaning between her words cuts him to the core; here, he is a playing a dangerous game. “I’m glad, baby. But – you’ve got to want to live for yourself,” he says, keeping her wide gaze. 

Slowly, she shakes her head. “It isn’t that simple,” she says heavily. 

“Isn’t it?” he asks, challenging her with his gaze and his continued hold on her. 

Jaw set, she pushes lightly at his chest. He doesn’t move, refuses to give her an inch to run with.

“Hawke – you –“

She shuts her eyes, her mouth trembling. He can feel the distress, the anxiety from her end of the bond. The hands cupping her face slide down through her hair to her spine, holding her steady. She struggles to rein herself in, to keep herself in check. He wants to push her, to let her loose; but he will not overreach, not now. 

“You saw what happened to your mother,” she says at last, a strange grip of control on her voice. She’s pulling back into the shell; the wolf scrabbles for control. “And with Rissa – I could not, in good conscience, leave you for good.”

The words hit him like bullets to the chest, a muted pain unscabbed. “Jesus, Sienna.”

“Otherwise – “ she pauses, opens her eyes. Her gaze is black and shining, devoid of stars. The psychic grip on her emotions is a hard lock. “Otherwise, I do not know that I would have returned.”

_I was born for war_. She had said that to him once, years ago in the midst of the beginning of their relationship. At last he realizes how deeply ingrained that notion is in her very being, in the scars left by her time under Ming. 

Everything in him, the wolf included, wants to push and shake, to claw for blood from a dead man. He merely tightens his grip on her waist, keeping her gaze. There is a fire in his blood, sharp and deadly. “You’re here, but you’re not back,” he says at last, voice cool. 

Her eyes widen. “Hawke.”

“You think I don’t know you? I _know_ you,” he says through his teeth, teeth that long to bite and mark. “And every day you shut me out, I feel it.”

“I am not – “

“Don’t- “ he grits out, his fingers biting into the jut of her hip. “Jesus fucking Christ, Sienna. I know.”

She stares at him, lines creasing her brow. “I feel normal,” she says, voice hard-edged. 

He raises a fist to his chest, thumping hard. “Not here.”

Her gaze falls to his chest, the span of hand over his heart. “I do not feel different,” she repeats evenly. 

“Yes you _do_ ,” he all but growls, reaching out to slide his palm over her sternum. She is warm even through the sweater, his fingertips brushing bare skin at her exposed collarbone. “Why are you hiding from me?”

“I didn’t come here for an interrogation,” she snaps, recoiling from his touch and shifting back on the bed. But she does not cower from him; there is fight in her once more, and Hawke takes heart from it. 

“Then why did you come here?” he snarls, not giving an inch. “Why did you come back at all?”

Her mouth twitches, cheeks flushing red with fury. But the voice that comes from her is still too even, too cool. “I could not be responsible for your losing of another woman you cared for.” She shifts and rises from the bed, placing distance between them as she moves to the hearth. 

Undeterred, he pushes off the bed and straightens to his full height, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’ve done a shit job of it.”

Lips thinning, she looks away, into the leaping orange-gold flames. Her hands fist at her sides, knuckles nearly white. 

Hawke stalks towards her, the wolf riding high in his chest, right under the skin. “Where’s that quick trigger?” he asks, voice husky. 

She is all even planes and flat lines as he touches her, his fingers skimming over her jaw. Her skin is smooth under his callused fingertips, the line of her throat taut. It is the oldest trick in the Psy book; he sees it now as clear as day over the treetops. Here she is all conditioning, Silence without the guiding force of the Net. But he has her – the mating bond holds her here and to him, and he can’t let her flounder alone. 

“I am not a little girl,” she says through her teeth, eyes fixed on him. 

“Never thought you were,” he says, the words raw. It’s perhaps the truest thing he’s said; she has never been a child, even when he had wished for a childhood for her so badly. 

Her eyes flash. “I have control now.”

He feels it, her attempts to strangle her emotions away from the bond. Palm settling at her throat, he curves his fingers under her hair at the nape of her neck, anchoring them both in skin. “You don’t need it,” he says low and quiet. “I like your quick trigger. I’ve said so.”

The muscles of her throat shift as she swallows hard. Every part of her is straining, physically and mentally. He is close to something here, and he is at a loss as to how to proceed. 

“Control is a falsehood,” he says after a moment, edging so close that he can feel the brush of her sweater against his chest. His thumb settles on her fluttering pulse. “It was a tool to keep you in line, Sienna. You broke that. You beat it. You don’t need to fall back to it now.”

“Stop it,” she says, her voice a cold whisper. Her fingers wrap around his wrist.

“Not this time,” he says, matching her stare for stare. 

Mouth mutinous, she digs her nails into his tanned skin, right at the soft underside of his forearm. He doesn’t flinch at the deep crescents that sink into his skin. “And when the wolf took the reins? What was that if not a mechanism of control?” she bites out. 

“The wolf took control because the fifteen-year-old was in mourning,” he retorts. His free hand curves to her waist, pulls her in tightly. Her body is a line of heat against his starved-for-touch limbs. “I felt every fucking moment of my losses, and the Pack’s.”

Sienna’s lips curl back, teeth bared. She is more a wolf every day. “Let go – “

“What the fuck did he say to you, Sienna?” Hawke interrupts, the words snarling out of his mouth unbidden. It is what he’s wanted to ask for weeks, since he found her alone in the blood and ash-drenched grass. “What did he say to you?”

She goes so still so abruptly, he thinks she’s about to faint. Lips parting, she blinks up at him, looking every bit as prey as an animal in the depths of the forests. Here, he has hit a nerve. 

“You are shutting a part of yourself down, baby. And I don’t think you even know it,” he says after a moment, edging towards gentleness. His hand relaxes on her throat to rest lightly. “And you – you said no barriers. No hiding. You give me everything, and I do the same.”

Barely breathing, she fixes a wide-eyed gaze on him, all black velvet skies. Her grip loosens on his wrist. 

“Something happened,” he says quietly, reining in the animal urge for blood. The perpetrator doesn’t stand before him; this is his mate, the woman he would give everything up for. He had been willing to die for her four years ago, amid ice-cold water and a wave of X-fire. Little has changed. “And if you don’t deal with it, you will turn into the shell of a woman Ming wanted you to be in the first place.”

A shudder rises over her skin. She tips her chin forward, her forehead sinking against his sternum. “I already am,” she breathes out, voice hollow in the warm air. “He said so.”

Anger rises, a blood-red glaze to his vision. Hawke swallows hard and immediately wraps his arms around her, holds her steady and close. To his relief, she curls her arms around him and holds on, shuddering in the circle of his grip. 

“I can’t – Hawke, I can’t – “

“Okay,” he says huskily, his mouth close to her ear. “Okay.”

When he shifts his grip to pick her up, she doesn’t resist. She curls around him, limbs like vines, as he settles them both into bed. There is a shift between them, the bottle uncapping on her emotions just the slightest. He gives a little in the reins he has on the wolf in return; it is a give and press with them, always. The room softens as the fire in the hearth settles. Sienna presses her cheek to his shoulder and breathes, all rasps and slow soft sounds. There are no tears, not tonight. 

He doesn’t know why it happens. But instinct settles the matter; sometime in the night, the wolf takes the reins and he shifts, stretched out next to her with his muzzle tucked into her neck. Sienna’s hands tunnel into the thick silver-gold fur at his neck. He nuzzles her, preening; it is the closest the wolf has been to her since the day in the clearing. With his legs tucked up underneath him, he watches her with a narrow gaze. 

Her dark eyes open, meet his. From the hearth’s light, there are touches of gold within her shining gaze, a reminder of the fire that lives inside her. The wolf feels no fear; just love, devotion, the stretch of the mating bond. It is the wolf who always knew, after all. 

Sienna drags her fingers through the ruff of his long neck. Her face is very still. 

“He said it was inevitable,” she says into his warm fur, curled around him like a comma. “That killing him changes nothing. Killing him was the last step, one I would not take before.”

Hackles raised, he listens. The man lingers and broods at the edges of the wolf’s consciousness, all sharp snarls and teeth. 

Sienna shifts against him, her cheek pressed to his haunch. “I felt pleasure when he died at my hand,” she continues quietly. “And I wonder if that makes me a monster just like him.”

The wolf growls low in his throat, nuzzling at her hair. 

“How can I come back and be what I was to you before? This is a weight I chose, and I can’t drag you down with me,” she whispers, voice steady and placid. 

_I’m here anyway. I’m here and I want to be here,_ , the man thinks as the wolf shifts itself closer to her. She matches her breathing to his as she falls asleep at last, uneasy and restless. He keeps a careful watch, a hunting-rest; he will let nothing touch her now. 

*

“You’re holding back, too,” Sascha says the next time she is at SnowDancer for a visit, two weeks since the night at the cabin. 

Hawke scowls as he walks with her to her car. Dorian waits for her, chatting amicably with Judd and Brenna. Pups wrestle and lope around them in the tall browning grasses of the White Zone, one of them Judd and Brenna’s Aiden. November has settled with a cool vengeance, the frost heavy in the dark nights. But the days are still crisp and full of autumn sunlight, and so the pups roam with Walker and the maternals nearby to watch out for them. Sienna, inching closer and closer to some sort of normalcy, keeps them all company when she is not training with Indigo. 

“Don’t pull the empathy shit with me, Sascha. You know I’m not into it,” he mutters, gaze fixed on Sienna as she stands with Walker and Ava at the edges of the group of pups. 

“I know,” Sascha says warmly, her hands protective on the growing swell of her stomach. “And I wouldn’t say a word if I didn’t- “

“What am I doing wrong?” he asks bluntly, stopping them halfway to the car. 

Sascha’s eyes flicker up to his, bright pinpricks of light set in the black velvet of her gaze. The sun touches the deep honey-gold of her skin; she is a picture of loveliness and life. It is hard to think of her as ever having been Psy. 

“You’re scared too,” she says softly. “Scared she’ll leave anyway.”

The wolf curls up next to Hawke’s skin, teeth bared. He shuts his eyes and rakes a hand through his hair. “She said as much.”

“But she didn’t. And she won’t,” she says evenly. “If Sienna was going to give up, it would have been weeks ago. You got in the door, Hawke. But she’s not going to meet you all the way.”

Scowling, Hawke sets his jaw and glances away, back towards Sienna. Sascha is a light touch on his wrist, his heart. 

“You have to shoulder her burden, just as she’s shouldered yours. This is the last burden she’ll carry, the last blood on her hands. It has to be yours, too,” Sascha says, voice low. 

“She is better though,” he murmurs, unable to look away. In the deep afternoon light, with her hair loose down her back, Sienna looks nearly back to her usual self, smiling with her uncle as the pups roll around at their feet. She is slowly allowing skin privileges once more, though not the full way; both man and wolf are starting to gnaw with hunger of a baser kind, despite his best efforts at control. 

Sascha makes a soft sound in the back of her throat. “She is. But she’ll never be her full self again unless you are yours.”

He slants a sharp glance at the empath. “I’m straining at the edges.”

“She is too,” she replies, patting his arm gently. “Maybe just – “

“All right. No sex advice,” he mutters, ushering her gently towards her faithful bodyguard. “That’s just fucking weird.”

Sascha laughs, the sound sweet and soothing in the air. “Changeling men, I swear,” she says, all affection. 

“Hey, you started all of this,” he says with a sharp little smile. 

The brilliance of the smile she directs towards him is startling and lovely. “I know. I regret nothing.”

Then, her grin turns sly. “You’re welcome.”

“Go home,” he barks out, half-amused, half-annoyed. 

Stroking a hand over her stomach, Sascha laughs. She reaches up to press a light kiss to Hawke’s cheek. “If it makes you feel any better, Lucas is going to be terrifically bothered by how long I’ve been here.”

“It helps,” Hawke drawls, nodding at Dorian. The blond cat grins, shakes his head as he helps Sascha into the passenger seat of the car. Hawke waves once as they drive off, Judd and Brenna coming to stand with him. 

“Everything okay?” Brenna asks, blue-brown eyes flickering from Hawke to Sienna and back. 

“Getting there,” Hawke says, glancing at Judd. “We’re getting there.”

*

The urge for intimate skin privileges eats at Hawke, hour by hour. The lingering sensations of Sienna’s hand against his chest, the brush of her hair against his skin – it isn’t enough. 

He takes to hiding in his office, between meals with Sienna. She is still restrained, but the utter silence on her end of the mating bond is gone. Now, he feels every inch of her struggle, her dismay, her horrors at what she think she has become. The wolf is still the only one to have heard her words from that night in the cabin not long past, but when she speaks to Hawke, the understanding is there. When he tells her of Pack business, of his day-to-day, it is more than a mate sharing with a mate; it is the inherent trust in her will and her spirit, an alpha’s trust in a fellow soldier. 

But he cannot take the constant closeness to her without the ability to touch. For two months, he has starved without full skin privileges, ensuring total control as to not shock Sienna right back into her shell. Kisses, the touch of hands to hands, the line of her throat; there is his internal boundary. When she is ready, she’ll let him know; he’s certain of that. She has taken to sleeping in just his shirts once more, her arm draped over his waist, but she goes no further. So he takes his meals with her, spends time with her and fellow Pack members, but keeps to his office when he cannot bear the sight of her bared shoulder, the curve of her mouth in sleep. 

Riaz says he’s never been so productive. Hawke punched him in the arm for that one, _hard_. 

A week after Sascha’s last visit, Hawke sits at his desk, head bowed over a datapad. Numbers, all numbers from SierraTech; it numbs his mind, makes it easy to lose focus, to think of the long sleek fall of Sienna’s hair against the cool skin of her back, the shift of her limbs in bed next to him. The nape of his neck grows hot, his cock half-hard in his jeans. 

“Get a fucking grip, Snow,” he mutters, raking a hand through his hair. 

“Hawke.”

Sienna’s voice and scent is a jolt to his overstretched senses. He looks up with a start, eyes narrow. She lingers like a shadow in the doorway to his office, the simulated light of the den catching at the dark sheen of her hair. 

“Hey,” he says after a beat, shifting in his chair. The sight of her, hair loose down her shoulder and back, wearing an old worn sweatshirt of his, helps nothing with the constant ache in his veins for her. 

She steps inside and shuts the door behind her, eyes hooded and dark. The neck of the sweatshirt slips down over her smooth shoulder, exposing skin. His gaze flickers there immediately. 

“It’s late,” she says, her mouth a thin line. He can feel the uncertainty rolling off of her in waves. And – fuck – there is the scent of her in the air, autumn spice and a sharp sweetness that he knows as well as his own scent. 

Hawke leans back in his chair, watching her carefully. “I’m catching up on some numbers.”

“Can it wait?” she asks, approaching the corner of his desk. The tentativeness in her voice cuts him to the quick, even as the slow slip of his sweatshirt down her shoulder sends his blood pressure through the roof. 

“Yeah,” he says, watching her as she leans against the side of his desk. She’s close enough to touch, to haul into his lap and kiss until neither of them can breathe – shit. “Is something wrong?”

She tilts her head, smoothing her hair over one shoulder. It skims her breast and ribs, a long dark fall of rubies in the simulated evening light. “Well – I don’t know.”

He blinks, entranced by her bare shoulder. No bra, the man notes as the wolf all but howls inside, scratching at the edges of his skin. _Shit_. 

“You – Hawke, why won’t you touch me?” she asks, frustrated and anxious. Her hands curl into fists at her thighs. 

_Fuck_. Hawke is immediately at attention, sitting up so straight his spine creaks. “What?” 

Her eyes widen, red spreading across her cheeks in a warm flush. “You’re hiding in your office at all hours, and – well, damnit, I’ve been all but draping myself over you when you _do_ come to bed, and – “

Somewhere, Sascha is laughing her ass off. 

A low growl edges out of his throat. Hawke reaches out and pulls Sienna over to him, leaning her back against the ledge of the desk. She keeps his gaze, eyes fierce and tinged with white stars. 

“Is it the scars? Judd and Lara did the best they could – “

His brow furrows. “Scars?”

She blinks. “I just assumed you saw– “

“They wouldn’t let me in the room with you,” he grits out, his hands spanning the jut of her hips and waist. He will never forget bringing her back to the den, forced to wait outside of Sienna’s room in the infirmary as Lara tended to her; the wolf paced those halls, as the man sat and dozed, refusing to move to their quarters. He and Riley had nearly drawn blood over it. 

“Oh,” she says, brow furrowed with deep lines. “Then – then why are you hiding from me?”

The wolf bristles, but it’s true; he has been hiding, to spare her – but to spare himself too. There are scars inside him that bear her name and he does not want to push her towards more guilt. 

“Is it because of what I told you?” she asks, voice low and heavy as she looks at him. “At the cabin?”

“Shit,” he mutters, pushing up from his office chair and shoving his datapad to the side. He picks up her by the waist and sets on her the flat surface of the desk. A startled yelp leaves her throat, eyes widening. “I’ve been hiding in here because my balls are fucking blue and I didn’t want to scare you into skin privileges,” he all but snarls, his hands cupping her face. 

Her fingers loop at the waist of his jeans, touching the taut finely-haired skin of his abdomen under his shirt. A hiss curls out of his mouth. “Weren’t you the one yelling at me about not holding back?” she asks archly.

“I’m raw,” he warns, stepping into the space between her parted thighs. His eyes are stuck on the bare skin of her collarbones, the rise of her throat. 

A small smile curls her mouth, remnants of Sienna past. “And I want you,” she says simply, eyes clear and shining. “Hawke, please – “

In an instant he has the hem of her sweatshirt in his hands, pulling it over her head. She gasps through a laugh, though her body stills as her bare skin hits the slightly cool room. In the dimming light, he can see the still-red remnants of her battle; a shining scar from a burn on her arm, white silver scars from Tk attacks. They are new to him, left over from a battle he could not spare her from. 

“Hawke,” she murmurs, her hands flexing on his hips. “It’s okay – “

His mouth slants over hers before she can get another word out. She is still for the briefest moment before her hands grip his hips and she is arching into his chest, her mouth open and wet and warm against his. A low husky growl curls out of his throat as his hands trail and tickle up the line of her ribs, cupping her breasts. Her nipples peak against the rough skin of his palms and she bites at his bottom lip. He can feel the reverberation of her moan against his lips and it inflames him further. 

“Jesus Christ, I’ve missed you,” he mutters against her mouth, licking and biting at her lips. 

She shifts, her thighs rising to hug his hips as she slides her hands under his chest to hot ridged skin. Every touch of her bare skin to his is like a brand of heat, a sharp reminder of what he’s been missing for all these weeks. To not touch her as he likes has been like missing a limb; he nips and bites over the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat, breathing in the sweet earthy scent of her. 

“I thought – I thought it was because of Ming,” she whispers as she tugs at his shirt. He doesn’t want to release her, but he knows the want for skin, knows he must give as well as he gets. Raising his head and his arms, he lets her pull off his shirt before he leans in, tangling his hands in the loose fall of her hair. “Because of what I did. I thought – “

“I’ve killed for you, for Pack,” he interrupts, the hair raised on the nape of his neck. He rests his forehead against hers, keeping her dark gaze. “Do you shy from me?”

“No,” she says quietly, voice warm. “I would never.”

“I will never turn away from you. No matter what,” he says huskily. “This – baby, it was because I was scared to push you too much.”

“I have been practically crawling over you every night when you come to bed,” she points out, eyebrow arched. 

Shrugging, Hawke leans into bite her bottom lip, a hard nip. “I’m a dumbass sometimes, especially when it comes to you.”

“How telling,” she murmurs, her hands stroking and petting up and down the line of his bare back. “Now shut up and kiss me.”

Grinning, he kisses her lightly before his mouth moves to the curve of her bare breast. His teeth sink into her skin and she shudders; the rise of goosebumps on her flesh pleases the wolf. Hands pluck at her jeans, undoing the button and zipping and pulling down, until soon she is naked and flushed, perched on the edge of his desk like a shimmering wave of skin and ruby-dark hair. 

“We should do this more often,” he murmurs, his mouth at her navel as he sinks to his chair once more. 

She wets her lips, her fingers tunneled in his thick hair. “I’ve tried before, you know. You’re just too shy in the office,” she teases, voice hoarse. 

He pulls the chair closer to her as his mouth sinks over the smooth skin of her inner thigh. Her feet settle on the arms of his chair as she spreads herself open for him. The flesh between her thighs is slick and pink; he breathes in as he kisses along the line of her thigh and hip. 

“Shy?” he murmurs, cupping her. Her hips rise, searching for friction; a cut-off moan slips out from her mouth. 

“Bashful,” she teases, sounding like the Sienna he knows so well. Her hands tug at his hair gently. “Hawke, _please_ – “

Fingers teasing her wet flesh, he leans in and licks, sucks, grazes her clit with the tip of his tongue. Her thighs close, hips shifting and rocking into the easy give of his mouth. He feels the dig and press of her fingertips in his hair, at the nape of his neck. The low cries and moans filling the air make the hair on his arms rise, the sound of her so warm, so full in his ears. He would do this all night, taste and devour her. His mouth over her clit, he slides one, then two fingers inside her, curving them just as he knows she likes. She is all shudders and low wrecked sounds around him, but she never tells him to stop. 

That is, until he lingers too long. She tugs as he licks at her sensitive flesh, a flinch shuddering through her. 

“Come up here,” she breathes, voice husky. She is a spitfire, loud and bold and everything he ever wanted at once. 

He licks his lips, aware of her gaze on him. “You come here.”

Sienna blinks, gaze lazy and sated. Her smile grows as her feet fall from the arms of his chair. She slides from his desk, leaning down over him to undo the button of his jeans. His cock strains against the denim, hard and hot, and _fuck_ if he’s not going to have a hard-on every fucking time he sits down at this desk again for the rest of his life. 

“I like this better,” she murmurs once his jeans are off and they are both naked and gleaming in the dim artificial light. The room smells of sex and them, spice and autumn and cool Sierra snows. Goddamn, he’s not going to be able to have meetings in here for days. 

He reaches for all, all long limbs damp and gleaming. She twines her arms around his neck as she settles astride him in the chair, lowers her mouth for a long and deep kiss. Her tongue slicks over his lips, against his own, and she is everything, _everything_ to him in this moment. The thought of losing her is too much; it catches him hard in his chest, a chill of fear. 

She stills against him, breathing heavily to match his own. His hands rest at her ribs, right at the underside of her breasts. “Hawke?” she asks, voice thick. 

Blinking, he meets her gaze. She is all stars tonight; her hair falls between them, loose and sweet-smelling. The curve of her mouth is a question. He leans up and kisses it from her, his hands stroking down her belly and over her thighs. 

“I love you,” he murmurs as he guides her down on top of him, the wet heat of her surrounding him. “Sienna – “

She kisses him once again, as if she cannot stop. The feel and scent and press of her weight envelopes him, anchors him; he guides her with his hands on her hips, teeth nipping at her lips with every groan and breath. He thinks he can feel her right in his bones, in his heart; where she belongs. 

Her fingertips curve at the nape of his neck, a possessive marker, and he knows with certain clarity that she feels the same. 

Later, once they’d haphazardly thrown on their clothes and hurried to their quarters like pups out past their curfew, Hawke leans over her, propped up on an elbow. Sienna stretches out next to him, the sheets loose at her hips. The room is swathed in darkness but his gaze is night-clear, picking out the new scars, the marks he missed amid the agony of the last weeks. His fingertips linger at the silver raised marks on her shoulder. 

“I hadn’t realized you didn’t know,” she says after a moment, her gaze heavy-lidded. Her hair spreads beneath her like a dark fan across the cool pale sheets. 

“They wouldn’t let me in the infirmary as they were treating you,” he says, voice low. “And then you were asleep for days.”

“Was I?” she asks, brow furrowing. 

He looks at her, his hand a soothing touch along the rise and fall of her belly. “You don’t remember?”

She passes a hand over her eyes, lines etched deeply into her brow. “I remember Ming. And then I remember waking up and finding you in the living room here. That’s all.”

_I burn_ , she had cried to him, her skin ice-cold with the spray of their shower. _I burn_ , and she remembers nothing of it. Hawke’s mouth turns as his hand settles. 

“What is it?” she asks drowsily. 

Abruptly he lays down, pulls her into the cradle of his arms. Her legs tangle in his, her cheek settling at his shoulder. “Nothing,” he murmurs, stroking his hand over the smooth fall of her hair. “Nothing, baby.”

Sleep comes to him easier tonight than most others; she is here, and safe, if not whole. But who among them is?

*

Slowly, as November shifts to December, the den settles and the alpha and his mate heal. 

Sienna is open once more, and at last Sascha can help her sift through the layers of emotion; guilt, fear, anger, loss. The haunted look of worry leaves Judd and Walker’s gazes; history will not repeat from mother to daughter. She resumes her rotations as a soldier, resumes her normal duties as his mate within the groups of the den. There are moments still when he sees the shudder in her gaze, the memories of a battle she’s still fighting somewhere; but she does not sink into them. She rises past and forward, ready for the next day’s events. 

The den shakes itself out of its doldrums, begins to prepare for Christmas and all that the holiday entails. Quietly, Hawke makes plans for a New Year’s vacation, just him and Sienna; she has never seen Europe, and he has never roamed. There is time now for the two of them to go together, with the den at peace and the territories settled.

At the beginning of the month, during the first snowfall, Lara gives birth to a loud, curly-haired baby boy with her hair and Walker’s eyes. When Sienna holds her newborn cousin, the sight strikes Hawke so deeply in his chest, he needs a moment alone. 

That night, Hawke is started awake by the sound of screams. 

“Shit,” he mutters into the darkness, groping for Sienna. She is stock-still next to him, her mouth open in a hollow scream. “Sienna – “

He cups her face in his hands and reaches for her through the bond. Fear quakes along the connection; nausea settles in his stomach with it. Her hands curl around his wrists; skin is an anchor for her. He remembers early on, when she would dream of before, of Ming; she told him that he was a help, that his touch brought her out of it. So, he leans in and kisses her, kisses her until she is relaxed under him and the iron grip she has on his wrists loosens just the slightest. 

“Hawke –“ she rasps out, eyes wet. 

“Tell me,” he urges, sitting up against the headboard with her cradled in his lap. Sometimes she is so small, so compact in his arms that he can almost forget the immense power held within her. 

Almost, he amends as she scrubs at her face, runs shaking fingers through her hair. In the night-quiet, he thinks he can hear the snow falling outside of the den, the Sierras dusted silver-pale with it. 

“It was me,” she says after a long silence. Her chest rises and falls in time with his, their breaths in sync. She rests a hand on his bare chest, right over his heart. “I was – I was pregnant, and my abilities killed the child.”

It feels as if his blood turns to ice right under his skin. He watches her with a hooded gaze, mouth set in a firm line. They have spoken of it in hypotheticals, the idea of a child; but with Ming on the hunt, there had been no question of it. Now, with the den settled and Sienna coming back to herself, it has weighed on Hawke’s mind. And with the birth of Lara and Walker’s son just a day past – he can’t say he’s surprised. 

The nightmare, though. “Is that possible?” he asks after a moment, voice gravelly. 

She looks at him, gaze heavy and dark. “I have no idea,” she says. The words are ragged, as if ripped from her throat. “Ming – no one knows.”

Her lips curl, the smile wry and deadly. “I wasn’t supposed to survive, you know.”

He leans in and kisses her, smooths a hand over her cheek. “You did. And so did I.”

Fingers curling against his chest, she tips her head back with a sigh. “That has to mean something.”

“It means we’ll figure it out together,” he says, voice harsh. 

She trails her fingertips along the sharp line of his collarbone. Her touch grounds him, anchors the wolf; just as his does for her. “I would have to be absolutely sure everything would be all right,” she says after a moment, meeting his eyes. “I mean it.”

“I know,” he murmurs, thumb brushing the rise of her cheekbone. 

Even in the darkness, her eyes are bright, white stars against dark velvet. “No one will hurt our child. Or you. Not even myself. Never again,” she says, voice firm and deadly. 

He leans into kiss her, the wolf close to his skin, to her. “Never again.”

They fall asleep like that, entwined and curled up at the headboard. It is a sound sleep, even with the ghosts and demons haunting their steps. 

*

Hawke presents Sienna with the tickets to Paris on Christmas morning, as they lay curled up in bed together. The cabin is warm and decorated for the holiday – a treat from Marlee and Toby, according to Walker. They will return to the den soon, to celebrate with Pack; but he wanted the moment of privacy for the two of them, in between all the madness and calls on his time and attention. 

“Here,” he says, handing her the envelope and stretching out in bed, his arms crossed behind his head. 

Wearing his shirt, Sienna sits up and shoots a look at him. “I don’t like surprises,” she reminds him, the amusement there in her cardinal gaze. Ming hasn’t stolen anything from her; she still struggles with purpose, with the life left for her to lead. But he is here, and so is Pack. He will never let her flounder. 

“You’ll like this one. C’mon, I printed it on real paper for you,” he teases. 

Her nimble fingers are at work on the envelope. “Very sentimental,” she says with a laugh. 

“I’m a fucking marshmallow for you, Sienna,” he growls. 

Her smile could light up San Francisco as she leans into kiss him lightly. “What – oh!” 

He watches as she unfolds the plane tickets, her eyes skimming the information. “A whole month?” she whispers. Her gaze is wide as it meets his once more. 

Shrugging, he nods. “Thought it would be nice. Fuck, Riley got a vacation years ago. We were due.”

Color flushes her cheeks pink. She sets the tickets aside and crawls over him, her smile bright and white in the firelight. “A whole month of you to myself,” she says, straddling his middle. 

“It’ll be January, too. So, lots of cold weather,” he says, hands coming up to rest on her bare thighs. 

“Clever wolf,” she murmurs, leaning over him. Her hair falls as a dark curtain around their faces. “I love you.”

Her mouth touches his lightly. With a fresh layer of snow glittering in the morning light outside, he turns them and settles her into the bed, kissing her until the breath is lost from his chest. 

“We’ll only go if you’re ready,” he says after a moment, stroking the hair back from her glittering eyes. 

Hands gripping his shoulders, she glares at him without heat. “I’m here, Hawke. I’m here and I want to live,” she says, and it is exactly what he feels in the bond between them. Her love and want of their life together resonates as if it is his own. 

Hawke kisses her then, and leaves the talking for another moment, far away from here. It is enough. 

*


End file.
